It is of considerable value to a company with an online presence to be able to monitor and understand the interaction of users with their webpages. Often websites guide visitors through a series of pages through to purchase points. Measurement and analysis of the progress of users through these processes with a view to increasing the rate of successful completion can lead to increased revenue.
The ability to quickly identify where users encounter problems means that the development of correcting measures can be expedited, minimising the risk of lost sales and the level of frustration felt by the users. The impact of any problems encountered by website users on a company's reputation, market position and its customer support processes can thereby be reduced.
Known implementations of user monitoring generally fall into two main categories, namely client-side browser implementations and server-side “network sniffers”. However, existing methods tend to be of limited accuracy and unable to cover the wide range of scenarios that regularly occur in interaction with modern web sites. Accordingly, these known techniques have been found to record user interactions with insufficient detail and accuracy to enable close replication of a user's web session.